"Even my return key
is depressed."
More Perihelion:
BobSward's Writer's Friendship Series
Aquick list to poets featured in this issue:
Nocturnal Transmission with Imagery as Attachment
(after Larkin)
I keep sending: I can't believe
You really didn't love me,
But I don't believe it.
I do believe. I was alone
In love. And now, alone, I grieve it.
Even my return key is depressed.
I miss you. But I miss my doubt
More fiercely: Doubt made love possible.
Doubtless I loved you, but, conversely,
I cannot doubt my love was misaddressed.
The system's mailer-daemon can admit
It's ignorant, so who am I not to?
I don't know you. I never did,
Or when I did, I didn't want to.
The Internet just sped up all this shit.
My programming makes it so damn
Easy: it's as if it knows
I'll keep forming these attachments--
That I'll point and I'll click and I'll
Virtually believe, especially at 3 a.m.
It's a kind of faith, a way of slowing down
The accelerated pace of modern
Love--the dubious consumer consumed
By keystrokes like "shift" and "control"
And the dim afterglow which love presumes.
_______________________________________________________________